The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is responsible for the standardization of Universal Mobile Telecommunication Service (UMTS) system and Long Term Evolution (LTE). LTE is a technology for realizing high-speed packet-based communication that may reach high data rates both in the downlink and in the uplink, which is thought as a next generation mobile communication system of the UMTS system. The 3GPP work on LTE is also referred to as Evolved Universal Terrestrial Access Network (E-UTRAN). An LTE system can provide peak rates of 300 Mbps, a radio-network delay of e.g. 5 ms or less, a significant increase in spectrum efficiency and a network architecture designed to simplify network operation, reduce cost, etc. In order to support high data rates, LTE allows for a system bandwidth of up to 20 MHz. LTE is also able to operate in different frequency bands and can operate in at least Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) and Time Division Duplex (TDD). The modulation technique or the transmission scheme used in LTE is known as Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM).
For the next generation mobile communications system e.g. International Mobile Telecommunications Advanced (IMT-Advanced) and/or LTE-Advanced, which is an evolution of LTE, support for bandwidths of up to 100 MHz has been discussed. LTE-Advanced may be viewed as a future release of the LTE standard and since it is an evolution of LTE, backward compatibility is important so that LTE-Advanced can be deployed in spectrum already occupied by LTE. In both LTE and LTE-Advanced radio base stations, known as eNBs or eNodeBs—where ‘e’ stands for evolved-, multiple antennas with precoding/beamforming technology may be adopted in order to provide high data rates to user equipments. Thus, LTE and LTE-Advanced are examples of Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output (MIMO) radio systems. Another example of a MIMO radio system is a Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) system.
In a known LTE system, such as LTE release 8 or 9 (Rel 8 or 9), so called user equipment specific reference signals, RS, has been specified for single layer beamforming. Single layer beamforming implies a transmission of rank 1, also referred to as rank 1 transmission. As an example, reference signals are provided for the purpose of channel quality measurements in order to enable channel demodulation. Two layer beamforming may also be employed. Two layer beamforming may be referred to as transmission of rank 2, or rank 2 transmission.
In case of transmission of rank 1 or 2 for the above mentioned, known LTE system, it has been decided to use same, or equal, transmit power for reference signal resource element (RS RE) and data resource element (data RE). Thus, the same transmit power for RS RE and data resource element (data RE) is handled and assumed by a user equipment (UE) when the user equipment receives transmissions. Hence, the UE may apply the same power processing to demodulation reference signal resource elements (DM-RS RE) and data RE for each layer. Since the same power processing is used for all layers, there is no need for control signaling on power normalization to indicate to UEs which power level has been used.
In LTE-Advanced, it has been proposed that up to rank 8 transmission, or transmission of rank 8, is to be supported by using an advanced antenna configuration, e.g. 8×8 high-order MIMO. Moreover, up to 8 user equipment specific reference signals, referred to as demodulation RS or DM-RS, have been introduced for the purpose of channel demodulation.
FIG. 1 is a resource element structure, depicting two resource blocks, used in OFDM transmissions of an LTE-Advanced system. A first resource block is indicated by the rectangle drawn with a dashed line. A vertical axis indicates time/symbols in time domain and a horizontal axis indicates frequency, e.g. subcarriers. DM-RS resource elements are indicated by C1 and C2 as is explained below. Empty boxes in FIG. 1 may, for example, comprise symbols for data, control or other items. With reference to FIG. 1, some characteristics of DM-RS according to LTE-Advanced with normal cyclic prefix (CP) are given below:                The same RS position, i.e. in time domain last two symbols in each resource block and in frequency domain subcarrier number 1, 2, 6, 7, 11 and 12.        RS overhead of 12 RE per layer, see 12 indications of C1 and C2, respectively.        Up to two CDM groups (Code Division Multiplexing), frequency division multiplexing (FDM) as shown by C1 and C2.        For rank 3-8 transmission, two CDM groups, indicated by C1 and C2, are used, and for rank 1-2 only one CDM group (group 1 indicated by C1) is used.        Orthogonal cover codes (OCC) across time domain only        
Hence, for high-order MIMO according to LTE-Advanced, up to 8 DM-RS will be transmitted in conjunction with up to rank 8 transmission. As shown in FIG. 1, two CDM groups C1, C2 will be applied when transmission layers go beyond two, i.e. for rank 3-8, transmission layers will be distributed into the two CDM groups C1, C2. Rank 1-2 transmission of LTE-Advanced can re-use Rank 1-2 transmission of the above mentioned, known LTE system. Thus, power utilization scheme for LTE-Advanced for Rank 1-2 does not differ from power utilization scheme for the above mentioned, known LTE system for Rank 1-2. Therefore, for reasons of consistency, a suggestion to expand the power utilization scheme to cover LTE-Advanced Rank 3-8 as well may have been presented. In such situation, DM-RS RE will require different power processing as compared to data RE. However, the UE assumes the same transmit power as mentioned above. Therefore, this may, for example, lead to inaccuracies in channel estimation and low power efficiency.